Langton knew he and McBride had so much to do: interview the workers at the Span, trace the dead man’s identity, discover his actions leading up to the day of his death. And there were so many people who could have connected with him—not just the Span employees but the
thousands waiting in the sprawling shantytown that had grown beneath the bridge’s deck and arches: the immigrants from almost every country in Europe; the Caisson Widows, the protesting wives of the many navigation engineers, or “navvies,” who had died in the construction of the bridge’s foundations; the Mersey mudlarks and assorted scavengers, fleecers, and predators.
“McBride, I need you to interview the sailor who believed he saw a boat dumping something this morning.”
“Stoker Olsen, sir.”
“If he’s sober, try to get descriptions, the type of boat he saw, anything you can.” Langton read through the telegram sent from the TSC’s Labor Department, who agreed to “make themselves available for his inquiries.” “Tomorrow, we’ll pay a visit to the Span Company and see if they know about our friend.”
“Can I drop you somewhere, sir?”
Langton glanced to the clock on his wall: twenty minutes after four. He stood up and reached for his Ulster. “Thank you, no. I have business in Everton.”
* * *
T
HE TERRACED HOUSE
in Hamlet Street looked no different from its neighbors, or indeed from the hundreds of dwellings in the adjacent streets. Faced with yellow brick and sandstone lintels, it merged into the soot-laden smog that had descended over Liverpool. Isolated pools of yellow light glowed on either side of the road; the lines of gas lamps gave way to a sharper, whiter light farther on, where the main road electroliers stood.
Langton paused at the front-garden gate and listened to the sound of a piano coming from some front room nearby; the same hesitant notes played over, obviously by a beginner, most probably a child. This area attracted ambitious families, those wishing to advance themselves. Families not so very different from Langton’s own.
He rang the bell and saw a vague shape moving behind the
stained-glass door panels. The maid who opened the door came from India or one of its colonial neighbors; the spot of red dye dabbed on her forehead contrasted with the white mob cap of her uniform. “Good evening, sir.”
“Matthew Langton,” he said. “I have an appointment for six o’clock.”
The maid stepped aside. “Please.”
After Langton gave her his coat, hat, and gloves, the maid left him alone in the front sitting room, giving him time to take in the contorted furniture of teak and sandalwood, the tapestries and tassels, the vivid rugs laid one over the other. Tribal masks grinned at him from the walls. A swirl of rich odors clogged his throat: jasmine, lilies, orchids.
Langton knew he’d made a mistake. The foreign maid, the room like a theater stage set, the overpowering fumes: All signaled artifice if not fraud. He opened the door, intending to leave, and found the maid about to enter. She blocked his escape. “Please, sir. This way.”
He followed the maid down the short hallway. He would apologize for wasting the spiritualist’s time, perhaps give her a few shillings as compensation, then leave. This was obviously no place for him. His heart went out to gatekeeper Howard, who had found solace in all this pretense.
The maid tapped at a door and ushered Langton inside. He had expected more of the same ornate decoration. Instead he stood in a bare, almost monastic room: a plain deal table with two hard chairs, one of which was occupied; a single electric lamp; bare floorboards whose polish reflected firelight.
The woman at the table took his hand. “Inspector Langton? I’m Genny Grizedale.”
“Mrs. Grizedale.” Langton shook her hand but didn’t sit down. “I fear I’ve made a mistake.”
She smiled. “I’m sorry that Meera showed you into the sitting room; it gave you the wrong impression, I’m sure. You see, most of my visitors
expect a certain…ambience. A certain spectacle. They would be disappointed if they saw this room, my real place of work. Sit, please. If only for the moment.”
Langton tried to guess the woman’s age. Her stocky frame and heavy black clothes and cap, so reminiscent of Queen Victoria’s perpetual mourning, implied late middle age, but no lines or fatigue marked her youthful face.
She smiled and said, “You are skeptical of my work.”
“How do you know?”
“By your expression and your movements, as well as your words.”
“I’m not sure you can help me.”
“You may be right,” Mrs. Grizedale said. “Shall we find out?”
Another door opened to allow the maid in with a tray balanced in both hands. Langton caught a glimpse of a modern, gleaming kitchen bathed in electric light.
“Thank you, Meera.” Mrs. Grizedale busied herself with the tea paraphernalia, the cups, saucers, pot, bowls, and trivet all in blue Chinese Willow pattern.
Langton cleared his throat and asked, “Have you practiced this…spiritualism for long?”
She tilted her head to one side. “I suppose I have. Ever since childhood, I could see things others could not, make certain connections others found difficult.”
“If you’ll forgive me saying so, it strikes me as a strange choice of career.”
Her smile faded. “It has never been a question of choice, Inspector. And there are many strange aspects to all our lives. Now, in your telephone call, you mentioned Mr. Howard; you know him well?”
“A few months only.”
She tended the teapot. “You share at least one thing: You have both suffered losses.”
A knife twisted inside Langton’s stomach. “Three months ago. My wife. Sarah.”
Mrs. Grizedale nodded and clasped her hands in her lap. She waited.
The warm, quiet room had an atmosphere of tranquillity and of disconnection, as though the outside world existed but some way off. Langton found himself explaining the events of Sarah’s wasting illness, the Infirmary, his arriving too late to say good-bye. He admitted his lack of rest and the nightmares that affected him when he did sleep. Because of either the spiritualist’s influence or the effects of months passing, Langton surprised himself by remaining calm; his voice didn’t waver.
Mrs. Grizedale listened, poured out the tea, and waited for him to finish. Then she said, “I am sorry for your loss.”
When she said that, Langton actually believed her. The words were not mere platitudes.
“You say you cannot sleep.”
“That’s so,” Langton said. “In fact, I almost fear sleep.”
“The nightmares? Tell me about them.”
Langton stared into the fire. “I cannot breathe. It’s as though the entire weight of the world presses down on my throat and chest, and something soft and clammy fills my mouth. When I manage to make a small sound, only a whimper, I feel the atmosphere around me—not air, something thicker and more oppressive—swallow the cry.”
As he remembered the dreams, the effects started to return. He closed his eyes a moment, took a deep breath, and continued, “That’s not the worst; it’s the sense of utter despair that grips me. Of being so alone, so bereft, so helpless.”
Now that he had admitted his fears, Langton hoped that they would lessen. For a moment, he wondered why he found it so easy to talk of these things to Mrs. Grizedale when he could not tell Sarah’s family or his own physician. Perhaps because the spiritualist was a stranger? That wasn’t the only reason.
As if on another path, Mrs. Grizedale said, “You visit the cemetery every morning.”
Had Mr. Howard told her? “I do.”
“Does it help?”
“It’s not a matter of helping,” Langton said. “I have no choice. I find myself drawn to…drawn there.”
Mrs. Grizedale nodded. “You cannot let your wife go, nor she you.”
He stared into those calm eyes. “Must I?”
“If you are to continue with your own life, then yes, I’m afraid you must.”
He went to speak, then bit back his words.
Mrs. Grizedale continued, “We live so close to death, Inspector. We are so fragile and yet so optimistic. We navigate the waters of each day without thinking of the hidden dangers, the rocks and shallows, the tides and storms. If we thought of them too often we would never accomplish anything; we might never leave our houses.”
Langton looked down. “Maybe that would be better.”
Mrs. Grizedale took his hand. “No, Inspector. That way lies not life but only a pale imitation of life. We cannot hide away. But these are mere words, and words do little to soften your loss. So.”
With that, she took his other hand in hers and set them on the small table among the crockery. Langton’s hands lay on their backs, with Mrs. Grizedale’s resting on his palms, her skin soft yet cold. “Breathe softly, Inspector. Close your eyes and forget the world outside this room. Relax.”
Langton listened to the crackle of the fire’s coals. No sounds of traffic or people filtered through to the room. Smells drifted past: tea, coal smoke, a faint perfume like white flowers.
“Now, Inspector, think of your wife; picture her, despite the pain I know will come. Focus on her.”
Sarah’s image rose in Langton’s mind and made his heart race and his throat tighten. Sarah. A summer’s day among the crowds at New Brighton, with the warm breeze swirling her pale cotton dress. The flash of her blue, blue eyes. Her dappled skin. Laughter. Sarah.
“I see…” Mrs. Grizedale whispered and gripped Langton’s hands a little tighter. “Sarah. Sarah. All is safe. Come to me. Come to me…”
Langton opened his eyes. Mrs. Grizedale rocked slightly in her chair, her eyes closed, her skin blushing. She tightened her grip on his hands. “Darkness. Cold darkness. And pressure, something pressing in from every side. Oh, the fear. The fear. Speak, Sarah. All is safe. Speak through—”
Langton winced as Mrs. Grizedale’s nails bit deep into his palms and drew blood. Her body snapped taut and rigid as though every muscle simultaneously contracted. The teacups and crockery shattered against the floor.
He tried to drag his hands from Mrs. Grizedale’s grip but she would not or could not let go. He said, “Meera, quickly.”
As the maid rushed into the room, Mrs. Grizedale’s body began to shudder; her heels drummed on the bare wooden floor. Blood trickled from her mouth.
“Grab her,” Langton said, “before she falls.”
Meera took the woman’s shoulders as Langton pulled his bloodied hands from her clawing grip. He helped Mrs. Grizedale to the floor and tried to slide a spoon between her teeth. He could not; the woman’s jaw was locked tight as though set in steel.
“Missy, oh missy.” Tears rolled down Meera’s cheeks as she held the spiritualist’s head.
“Has this happened before?”
“Yes, sir, but not for long time. And never this bad.” Meera stared at Langton. “What you do to her?”
Before he could answer, a terrible, guttural sound erupted from Mrs. Grizedale’s throat. Her eyes opened to reveal dilated pupils and an expression of absolute fear. Then, as suddenly as they had started, the contractions ceased. Langton felt her body go limp; her head lolled to one side.
Fearing what he would find, Langton pressed his fingers into her
neck. Her heart still beat, although erratically. As he counted, her heart gradually slowed until it seemed almost normal. Then her eyes focused on Meera and she whispered, “Brandy.”
As Meera ran into the kitchen, Langton helped Mrs. Grizedale sit upright on the floor. He supported her back with his knee and dabbed at her mouth with his handkerchief. He stifled his questions and waited for her to catch her breath.
Mrs. Grizedale sipped the brandy and looked at Langton. “Never again…I had hoped…”
“Don’t talk,” Langton said, even though he longed to know what had brought this about and what she had discovered about Sarah. “Rest awhile.”
Mrs. Grizedale shook her head. “I am sorry. So very sorry.”
“What is it?”
“Your wife is lost.” Mrs. Grizedale turned her bloody, frightened face to Langton. “The Jar Boys have her.”
A
S HE WALKED
home through the streets of fog and shadows, Langton went over everything he had ever heard about the so-called Jar Boys. The cold air numbed his face; pools of light, gas and electric, punctuated the gloom, but Langton stared straight ahead and remembered stories told around firesides and on midnight beats. For the Jar Boys inhabited that strange borderland between truth and fiction, or between hope and fear.
The poor believed in their existence, but he had also heard of them from time-served constables and sergeants, from apparently sane and balanced veterans. Physicians refuted them, just as they had with the Resurrectionists, but the newspapers reported Jar Boy gangs in Liverpool, London, Edinburgh, and Newcastle; in Paris and Frankfurt; in America. As far as Langton knew, that was all they were: sensationalist stories.
The stories all shared the same basic “facts”: The Jar Boys stole the souls of the dying. With their bizarre apparatus, they waited at the bedsides of those close to the end and captured the soul as it left the body,
trapped it in special vessels of glass or clay. Poor families, either tricked or paid a guinea or two, allowed the Jar Boys access during those final minutes.
It was madness. It had to be madness.
What if it was true?
Langton stumbled at the junction of Briar Street and Islington. He clung to a hissing gas lamp standard and pressed his face to the clammy, ridged steel. What if Sarah’s soul had been captured? Trapped and alone, she could be anywhere now, beyond Langton’s help. He’d sworn to shelter her, to protect her. Always.
No, it could not be true. Mrs. Grizedale must be wrong. That seizure had not been an act; Langton still had her blood on his clothes. And she’d spat out fragments of broken tooth. She had been sincere, of that he was sure.
Heavy footfalls in the fog preceded a constable in a slick black cape. He stood watching Langton for a moment, rocking on his heels.
Langton straightened up, nodded to the constable, and walked on; since Langton didn’t stagger like a drunk, the constable didn’t call out. That made Langton remember the array of bottles locked in the sideboard at home. Whiskey and port. Wine, brandy, Curaçao. All waiting, collecting dust for so long. Wasted for so long. He walked faster.